D-Day 80 years on: World leaders and veterans gather in commemoration

Early Thursday, a lone military piper paid tribute to fallen D-Day soldiers on Gold Beach to mark exact moment British troops stormed Normandy beaches 80 years ago

World War II veterans from Britain, the United States and Canada are in Normandy this week to mark 80 years since the D-Day landings that helped lead to Hitler’s defeat.

Joining anniversary events in Normandy on Thursday will be US President Joe Biden, who will commemorate the millions of young service members who answered the call to defend their countries’ in WWII.

The commemorations kicked off early in the morning with a military piper playing a lament at sea at the exact moment of the beach invasion in 1944.

At Gold Beach in Arromanches, Major Trevor Macey-Lillie paid tribute to fallen veterans, who led the biggest seaborne invasion in military history, by playing Highland Laddie as he came ashore.

The piece was also to remember a lone piper who played in the Normandy landings and was never shot at.

Major Macey-Lillie began in a landing craft utility before being driven up the beach in a DUKW amphibious vehicle.

A military piper comes into shore on a DUKW amphibious vehicle on Gold Beach in Arromanches in Normandy, France. / Credit: PA

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage was spotted coming down to Gold Beach ahead of the tribute.

On Wednesday, both Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer muted their efforts on the General Election campaign trail, attending the UK’s national commemoration event in Portsmouth alongside members of the royal family and armed forces veterans.

Across the channel, the Princess Royal paid tribute to British D-Day veterans, telling one he was the reason she performed her public role.

Princess Anne joined veterans and their families at the Royal British Legion’s (RBL) poignant service of commemoration at Bayeux War Cemetery, where the congregation was surrounded by the manicured graves of more than 4,000 military casualties.

Later she took part in a solemn vigil in the cemetery, and described “the nervous trepidation of those allied sailors, soldiers and airmen who, 80 years ago today, were charged with storming the Normandy coastline and beginning the campaign to free western Europe from Nazi tyranny”.

It comes after hundreds of armed forces personnel parachuted into an historic D-Day drop zone in Normandy earlier on Wednesday to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the airborne invasion to liberate Europe from Nazi rule.

A brass band could be heard playing Vera Lynn’s “We’ll meet again”, a defining classic of the Second World War, as paratroopers recreated the historic landing.